With just three races remaining the record for most pole positions in a single season – 14, by Nigel Mansell in 1992 – is already out of his reach.

His 13th career pole position gives him as many as Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, Jacky Ickx, Jacques Villeneuve and Juan Pablo Montoya. Win number eight puts him level with Jacky Ickx and Denny Hulme.

This was also the first time Vettel has won twice at the same track. Only one driver has won more than twice in F1 races at Suzuka: Michael Schumacher, with six wins scored in 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004.

Mark Webber stopped Vettel from getting fastest lap by setting a 1’33.474 on the last lap of the race. That means Webber now has as many fastest laps in his career as Vettel and Lewis Hamilton: six.

Second place for Webber sealed Red Bull’s seventh one-two. One more will give them as many as Brabham, Lotus and Tyrrell. After that the next highest on the list is Williams – with 33.

Red Bull have led 543 of the 948 racing laps so far this season – more than half. McLaren have led 230 and Ferrari 158. The remainder were led by Nico Rosberg (16) and Sebastien Buemi (1).

The most races won by any driver over the 16 races so far this year is four, which Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso have done. You have to go back to 1983 (which was a 15-race championship) to find the last time the most races won by a single driver was so low. There were eight different winners that year – so far this year there have been five.

Schumacher finished in the points for the 200th time in his career. He has scored points in 75.75% of the 264 races he has started. During the span of his career the number of points-paying positions increased from six to eight, in 2003, and now to ten.

Sauber scored their best result of the year with Kamui Kobayashi seventh and Nick Heidfeld eighth.

All the teams that had both their cars still running at the end of the Japanese Grand Prix had them in consecutive positions: Red Bull first and second, McLaren fourth and fifth, Sauber seventh and eighth, Toro Rosso tenth and 11th, Lotus 12th and 13th and HRT 15th and 16th.

Retirements

Felipe Massa failed to finish a race for the first time in 2010. That means every driver has now failed to finish at least once: